“We do this a lot in videogames. I think I’ve done it a lot in videogames. Sometimes I’m hypercompetitive, mostly as a response to the anticipated rejection of my peers. In my rush to get ahead of the criticism, I’ve been obnoxious. But looking back at my life, it’s also been a pattern. There are many times where I’ve overcompensated for my mental or physical health because I didn’t want to feel different, or less than.”

History

This week there have been a number of retrospectives looking both at the development history and critical work about different games.

Girls on Neopets took what they needed from the site and used the skills acquired there to further develop a burgeoning digital girls’ culture, whether it be in expanding their guild pages into personal sites, teaching others to code, or exchanging those skills for economic gain in Neopets.

Chrono Cross, environmentalism, and a world without humanity | MediumOn his medium blog, Nate Ewart-Krocker notes a line of dialogue in 1998’s Chrono Cross that left a major impact on him when he first played it. In tying the line to the game’s broader existential and environmental themes, he writes to better understand the game responds to the history and place that created it.

“While many jobs are demanding, the conditions in this industry are uniquely unforgiving. Most game developers in the United States do not receive extra compensation for extra hours. They may gaze with envy at their colleagues in the film industry, where unions help regulate hours and ensure overtime pay. Their income pales in comparison to what’s offered in other fields with reputations for brutal hours, like banking and law.”

“Scenes” I expected to be cute are overlaid with static and blacked-out eyes, and characters sometimes zoom in with uncomfortable closeness. The game knew that I knew this wasn’t normal, and it used that as a tool to make me uneasy.